Interesting Interview about the War on Terror

[solarz]

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Some particularly interesting points:

But there's not one American in 1,000 who realises that if we were fighting an enemy who hated democracy and liberty and women in the workplace and beer after work, that the threat wouldn't even rise to the level of lethal nuisance.

They wouldn't have any of the things we have in our own country. But they're not fighting us because of who Americans are, how we live or how we think, they're fighting because of what our government has done in the Muslim world over the past 40 years.

Whether it's support for the Saudi police state, our military presence in various Muslim countries and probably the most dangerous thing now is our unqualified, unquestioning support for the Israelis. This is a very substantive religious war from the perspective our enemies.

And none of that really is to say that our policies are evil or were made by mad men. But if you're going to understand how to defeat an enemy, you best understand his motivation. And right now the United States government, under both parties, is fighting an enemy that doesn't exist. There is not an enemy out there who's just crazy wild to die because my daughters go to university.

And I'm afraid much of the media turned out, turned their credentials in as reporters and became cheerleaders. In Tahrir Square they interviewed 100 or 200 middle class, English speaking, democracy talking, well groomed Egyptians. Then they read their Facebooks and their Twitters and then they extrapolated that over 85 million devout Muslims, more than 60 per cent of whom are illiterate, and decided that secular democracy was blooming. I think that can only be described as a fantasy.

But in terms of the Arab Spring over the course of the entire area of North Africa, it's been an enormous advantage for Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Libyan Islamic Fighting group. They've overrun numerous arsenals, the flow of weapons into the hands of Islamists in Africa now is enormous.

And they've also opened up gaols and Gaddafi and Mubarak and Ben Ali filled their gaols with Mujahideen, with Islamist fighters. Some portion of those fighters are going to return to the ranks of the Mujahideen with a very, very strong grudge to work out.

They won't be ruled by tyrants but there will be not be a secular democracy ma’am. The people who want secular democracies will be eaten by the revolution. NATO has just supplied air support for a group of people fighting Gaddafi in Libya who, if they were in Afghanistan, would be known as the Taliban.

 

[Finn McCool]

This is a fine topic for discussion, but let's not get too political and everything

Also, according to the CIA World Factbook the population of Egypt is 71% literate, so that article is wrong what it says that more than 60% of the Egyptian population is illiterate. 83% of men and 59% of women are literate

 

[airsuperiority]

"I think we in America, in Britain, in Australia, in Canada, we forget that we have been at this, meaning we've been at democracy-building since 1215, for 800 years, and we don't quite have it perfect yet. But somehow we believe we're going to put our experience on a CD-Rom and give an iPad to these would be democrats in Tunisia and Egypt, and they're going to replicate what's taken us eight centuries to produce."
Well-said, well-said, and well-said.

This man is basically saying one thing that we've heard from China's Foreign minister: the West is very conceited, and conceited will mark the downfall of the West.
This article is just saying "it's the West's own doing" without actually using saying it out in a sentence form, which is true. I seriously don't think a typical person, never mind a bunch of Middle Eastern Islamists, will wake up first thing in the morning deciding they'll do everything through terrorist tactics and violent ways as the primary way of protest or doing things. It doesn't matter if you're extreme fundamentalists or not; a person's not gonna decide to use violence if he/she feels there are other options, and you gonna really need to push people really that far in order for someone to actually get out of their way just to start an extensive campaign with various sophistication, devotion, and time.

The only difference is that these people don't have that much patience, or in other way to see, their patience for the West is already long gone.

 

[solarz]

Also, according to the CIA World Factbook the population of Egypt is 71% literate, so that article is wrong what it says that more than 60% of the Egyptian population is illiterate. 83% of men and 59% of women are literate

Actually, what he said was:

that over 85 million devout Muslims, more than 60 per cent of whom are illiterate

Egypt's entire population is only 80 million, and I doubt all of them are "devout muslims", so he must be referring to all the "devout muslims" involved in the entire Arab Spring, not just in Egypt but also in Libya and Tunisia.

 

[plawolf]

Is the guy saying anything we haven't heard before from a myriad of different sources and people before?

If this was Obama, it would mean a great deal, but just another person coming out and saying this will not suddenly make everyone in the west sit up and take notice of this view point when so many others saying basically the same thing have been largely dismissed or ignored.

I think that the main reason behind the dismissive attitude in the west to this viewpoint is simply because the current 'mainstream' view is more simple, easier to take as it doesn't make people in the west feel bad by suggesting they brought all this terror on to their on heads, it is the view western governments want people to take, so there is a lot of spin to try and make things appear this way. But most importantly, because the west is winning.

People, as in the masses, only tend to sit up and question whether the current path they are on is the right one when things start to, and continuously does go badly wrong.

Until it that happens, you will have the same small minority making this same case and the vast majority in the west continue to pay it no heed.

Maybe the west is rich, powerful and skilled enough to forever deny the terrorists and extremists and the general public never have to face up to the reality of what is really fueling muslim extremism and terrorism, or the terrorists might slip one past the line and hit us with another atrocity big enough to force a total re-think in western society and governments.

As much as I dislike how the real issues that is giving rise to terrorism is not being properly addressed, I must say that I would never hope that the required awakening be brought on by another 9/11. One such tragedy is already too much for a single lifetime.

 

[Finn McCool]

I think that the Arab Spring is, in terms of macro-history, a similar moment to the French Revolution, in terms of "nation formation". We've seen that Western attempts to impose "democracy" on the Middle East fail. Before democracy and just government a nation must forge a unified identity and a concept of citizenship for itself. That's what's going on in the Arab spring. That will leave behind the pre-national identification of radical Islam, and remove the main vulnerabilities of Middle Eastern nations to foreign interference. Once Middle Eastern nations forge more meaningful, tightly bound national identities for themselves, they will be on a more equal footing with the West, making the current paradigm of relations obsolete. It's happening right now.

And thanks for explaining that Solarz, although I still take issue with that guy's numbers. He doesn't rely define the population he's describing when he says that there are "85 million devout Muslims" with a "60% illiteracy rate". I can't think of how that math would add up even if you count Libya and Tunisia, mainly because of the literacy part.

 

[airsuperiority]

Is the guy saying anything we haven't heard before from a myriad of different sources and people before?

If this was Obama, it would mean a great deal, but just another person coming out and saying this will not suddenly make everyone in the west sit up and take notice of this view point when so many others saying basically the same thing have been largely dismissed or ignored.

I think that the main reason behind the dismissive attitude in the west to this viewpoint is simply because the current 'mainstream' view is more simple, easier to take as it doesn't make people in the west feel bad by suggesting they brought all this terror on to their on heads, it is the view western governments want people to take, so there is a lot of spin to try and make things appear this way. But most importantly, because the west is winning.

People, as in the masses, only tend to sit up and question whether the current path they are on is the right one when things start to, and continuously does go badly wrong.

Until it that happens, you will have the same small minority making this same case and the vast majority in the west continue to pay it no heed.

Maybe the west is rich, powerful and skilled enough to forever deny the terrorists and extremists and the general public never have to face up to the reality of what is really fueling muslim extremism and terrorism, or the terrorists might slip one past the line and hit us with another atrocity big enough to force a total re-think in western society and governments.

As much as I dislike how the real issues that is giving rise to terrorism is not being properly addressed, I must say that I would never hope that the required awakening be brought on by another 9/11. One such tragedy is already too much for a single lifetime.

Actually sadly, 9/11 didn't wake up the West in their own doings other than stimulating a more violent response, and narrow-minded mentality. Western arrogance is fed through 3 ways: 1. globalization: the ability to spread their ideology and policies 2. lack of nations standing up to them: China is the only effective one; the rest aren't effective, or not competitive enough to play this one-sided ball game 3. the rest of the world still behind the West, either as being backwards/lack of modernization, or bandwagoning.
Mentality is similar to having a billionaire neighbor coming over and mocking your garden every 2 days. You hated it, but you can't do anything because the odds are against you, whether he has a bigger house, or other neighbors who decided to side with him just because he's rich. As of that, he's gonna keep up his attitude, even if his own garden looks like a jungle, until someday you have a bigger house than he does, a nicer garden, and everyone bandwagons your position. 9/11 is equivalent of trying to light up his garden; it just makes him more mad, not reflect why you did that for.

 

[airsuperiority]

I think that the Arab Spring is, in terms of macro-history, a similar moment to the French Revolution, in terms of "nation formation". We've seen that Western attempts to impose "democracy" on the Middle East fail. Before democracy and just government a nation must forge a unified identity and a concept of citizenship for itself. That's what's going on in the Arab spring. That will leave behind the pre-national identification of radical Islam, and remove the main vulnerabilities of Middle Eastern nations to foreign interference. Once Middle Eastern nations forge more meaningful, tightly bound national identities for themselves, they will be on a more equal footing with the West, making the current paradigm of relations obsolete. It's happening right now.

And thanks for explaining that Solarz, although I still take issue with that guy's numbers. He doesn't rely define the population he's describing when he says that there are "85 million devout Muslims" with a "60% illiteracy rate". I can't think of how that math would add up even if you count Libya and Tunisia, mainly because of the literacy part.

If it comes back down to Huntington's clashes of civlization, then I guess we'll be seeing China allying up with Middle East, and then slowly gain more influence with the lesser EU states.

 

[kwaigonegin]

I think that the Arab Spring is, in terms of macro-history, a similar moment to the French Revolution, in terms of "nation formation". We've seen that Western attempts to impose "democracy" on the Middle East fail. Before democracy and just government a nation must forge a unified identity and a concept of citizenship for itself. That's what's going on in the Arab spring. That will leave behind the pre-national identification of radical Islam, and remove the main vulnerabilities of Middle Eastern nations to foreign interference. Once Middle Eastern nations forge more meaningful, tightly bound national identities for themselves, they will be on a more equal footing with the West, making the current paradigm of relations obsolete. It's happening right now.

and that's one of the hardest things to achieve! national identity and patriotic loyalty. Why? 1 word! TRIBES!
There are literally hundreds of tribes in the mid east and Africa and they are fiercely loyal to it.... before any political government, religion or entity.

 

[delft]

Two remarks:
Both Germany and France became nations in the sense applied here after the war of 1870: France to make the country stronger to be able to defeat Germany the next time, Germany became an Empire instead of a collection of German speaking countries. Both were helped in this by the development of railways and of state education, especially extending the use of standard language.

There is a country in the Middle East that is more than half way to nationhood: Iran. It also says that the use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable. It would be an excellent friend to civilized countries. Western countries prefer to be friends with the nuclear armed state Israel.